


Something Guiltily Desired

by Dr_Madwoman



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Selysa, Selyse refuses to bring her food so that dream is dead, but mostly Selysa, fun with geology, hot spring shenanigans, if permitted Lysa would just live in the water, ladies in love being dorks, lesbians run Westeros more at 11, peripheral power lesbians, tw: miscarriage, tw: stillbirth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-01-27 21:30:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1723190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Madwoman/pseuds/Dr_Madwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not pretty, nor witty, nor even very scandalous, Lady Arryn and Lady Baratheon were free to build something together at the edges of everyone's awareness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I own none of the characters or locations mentioned within, I'm just giving these understated ladies some love. Expect Lysa/Selyse in a loving if weird long-distance relationship, with occasional ferocious domestic squabbling and intense jealousy. Shireen and Sweetrobin brotp may emerge. Melisandre is a thing, as much as Lysa wishes otherwise.

Lysa stood in the doorway, too frightened to go forth, too worried to turn back. The bedchamber was quiet now, and terribly still; Lysa could hear the  ever raging sea through the window.

She took a careful step forward, then another. In the bed, Selyse made no move to acknowledge her.

"I am back."

Selyse opened her pale eyes and regarded at her for a long while, her face ashen in the dawn’s cold light.

"Why did you return?" she finally asked, and she turned over in her bed so that her back was toward the door. Lysa swallowed, raised her hand to her heart; Selyse was weak, so very weak,and unbidden the image of the child’s colorless body came to her. She shuddered in horror.

"I will not leave you, darling. You must know this."

"I did not ask for you."

The words fell like stones, and Lysa flinched as though Selyse had raised her hand to her. Still, she crossed the remaining distance between the door and the bed and settled herself at the edge of the mattress.

"The pain is great, I know. I _know,_ darling.” she murmured, lifting her  hand, letting it hover over Selyse’s damp hair. She did not yet dare touch her.

Selyse suddenly shifted, struggled upward in her bed so that she was eye to eye with Lysa, and she stared at her with such a look of wrath that Lysa nearly ran from the room.

"You know _nothing_ , you empty-headed child! Though you have lost children, do not think that you understand; you have something to show for your suffering! You have a son!”

Her words wounded Lysa, more surely than a dagger to the heart, and the smaller woman folded in on herself, her throat unbearably tight.

"Loss is loss," she said softly, "And in case you’ve forgotten you have Shireen."

Selyse laughed, a high, wild sound that raised the hairs on Lysa’s arms, and she saw that her love’s eyes were glassy with tears.

"A scarred, scared girl!" she cried. "Even your sickly boy is better than that! A damaged daughter is nearly worse than no child at all, that is what they say in King’s Landing. What sort of woman am I, if I cannot give my husband sons to come after him? What use am I?"

Lysa slapped her, hard enough to stun her into silence, and in the next moment she gathered Selyse into her arms and held her.

"You must not listen to them. You must not _ever_ listen to them.”

Selyse resisted for but a moment, her body made weak from exertion and loss. She leaned into Lysa, her face hidden in her coppery hair, and at last the tears came.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Disloyalty cannot be tolerated, not now, when the days are bleak and their enemies watch. Fealty must be sworn, to Lord and lord alike, else all shall be lost in darkness.

_It must be done, it must be done._

Selyse reminds herself of this every morning as she climbs the stairs winding up the Sea Dragon tower, forcing her heart to beat slowly, slowly.

In the early days, Lysa would smile when her chamber door was unlocked, and would try to greet Selyse when she entered. Selyse knows that her wayward rivermaid had not thought her serious.

She began to understand when a fortnight passed with no release and no words of comfort from the Queen of Dragonstone.

Lysa does not smile at her anymore.

Today Lysa stands against the far wall, her hands wringing together, and she watches Selyse with wide eyes.

"When will you let me out? It is cold here."

"I will release you when you have done what is needful, no sooner."

Selyse tries to keep the steel in her voice, but must look away when Lysa’s eyes fill with tears.

"I cannot, you know I cannot and still you ask me!"

Selyse bites the inside of her cheek until blood comes, and turns on her heel to leave. She hears Lysa stumble after her (are her limbs numb with cold,she wonders, the windows here have no glass and the hearth is dead), but shuts the door behind her, locks it with the keys hanging from her belt.

"Selyse, please!"

_It must be done._

Selyse gathers her skirts in her hands and navigates the stairs down again, swallowing hard against the sudden tightness of her throat.

**

Lady Melisandre praises her for her firmness later that evening, and Selyse nearly smiles. If she must do this, at least she can look to the Lady to keep her steady.

"It will be soon. Lady Arryn is a soft little thing, made for comfort and plenty. Time without either will remind her of her duty." Selyse says, and wonders over the strangeness of the title in her mouth. She has not referred to Lysa as such since the earliest days of their acquaintance.

_Lack of love will break her more surely than lack of luxury._ She thinks, and she shoves the thought aside, glances quickly at Lady Melisandre from the corner of her eye. The Lady smiles, almost as if she knew the thought and agreed.

"I am glad to hear it, my Queen. I have had a vision from our Lord that makes me think that we will have need of Lady Arryn’s resources before very long."

And Selyse’s mind is stolen away from Lysa, and she asks of this vision, of their Lord’s desires. Melisandre tells little and excuses herself soon after, leaving Selyse troubled in the empty sitting room.

She must redouble her efforts if they are to survive.

**

Lysa takes to begging two moons after Selyse first turned the key on her, and Selyse almost chokes on pity and grief to see her on her knees.

She says, _why do you do this_. She says, _let me out_. She says _please_ most of all, every other word is _please_ , and at the end of each of Selyse’s visits she says _don’t leave me in the dark._  
  


She says _I love you,_ and Selyse feels as though she is dying each time the words come.

__  
**  


Selyse is the one to suggest that the faithful perform the night ritual at the foot of Sea Dragon tower, so that Lysa might see the glory of their Lord.

Lady Melisandre agrees, and adds almost as an afterthought that they should dedicate the infidels there as well.

Selyse does not hesitate, but looks into the Lady’s bright face and nods.

 

**

Three they burn at the foot of Lysa’s tower, and Selyse watches the dance of flame and ash in hopes R’hllor will reveal the best way to bring her beloved to Him. The screams of the blasphemers break her concentration, and for the first time the smell of them turns her stomach.

She turns her eyes skyward, following the smoke as it escapes up and up and up, and she fancies that she can see a white face peering out the highest window, and red hair flying in the wind.

Selyse suddenly pitches forward onto her knees and retches until it feels as though her heart will come up onto the sand.

_**  
_

Selyse visits the morning after, and finds Lysa huddled at the far end of her little chamber, as far from the door as it is possible to get. She crouches like an animal on the floor, her shift dirty and her eyes wild.

Selyse realizes all in a moment that she could likely count all the bones of her beloved’s face and arms if she so chose; that sweet plumpness could not last  on bread and water alone.

Without thinking she crosses the room, her arms held out to shelter, to soothe, but Lysa shrinks away from her, stops breathing, perhaps even stops her heart.

Selyse lets her arms fall and reaches for the anger that has never been far from her all her life long. Anger is clean, anger is true, and if she is angry she can do what must be done.

"Do not look at me so."

"You killed them."

"They denied R’hllor, and defied the King. That is what awaits the unfaithful."

She leaves on these words, knowing that she cannot stay and look at Lysa’s frail body and pleading eyes. If she stays she will see not an infidel but her life’s love, and will fall at Lysa’s feet to beg her forgiveness.

Selyse runs down the hall to escape the sound of Lysa’s weeping.

 

**

She stays away for three days, eating little and sleeping less. She avoids Lady Melisandre, fearful that she will demand still more cruelty of her. She is starting to find the price of salvation too high.

_It was always too high. This you knew .  
_

Ships, swords, men, meat, grain, gold, horses, healers _-_ can she bear to buy them with Lysa’s fear and grief? 

She cannot answer the question, and that is answer enough.

She must let her go.

Let them all die under the swords of the Lannisters or be consumed by the Other, let Lysa flee back the Vale and never speak to her again - it must be done.

Selyse rises and makes ready.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol what is formatting. Anyway Selyse is the worst girlfriend ever probably? If you're wondering why she's locking Lysa up and setting things on fire under her window I think it's stated somewhere in the books that the Vale owes allegiance to Stannis or something?????? Idk. Lysa is extremely reluctant to sign on with the crazy fire-cult and possibly endanger the entire Vale if Stannis fucks up so there we go. Also she h8s Melisandre for stealing her girlfriend.
> 
> God I'm tired.


	3. Chapter 3

 

The the cavern that held Dragonstone's hotsprings was a crude and primal place, Lysa thought.  When compared to her dim memories of the springs of Winterfell the great cave looked like something out of a nightmare, not fit for human visitation.

Far from the serene skies that smiled on Winterfell's springs, this place was hacked from the living rock of Dragonstone, filled with heat and darkness and the scent of sulfur. Only the braziers burning at the edge of the springs held back the ravenous dark, casting strange lights on the surface of the water.

Lysa loved this place almost as much as she loved the Stone Drum during an autumn gale, or Selyse's bedchamber in the early morn.

It was the eve of her first day back on Dragonstone, and in keeping with tradition she had by turns coaxed and threatened Selyse into joining her in the springs, far from the prying eyes of servants and knights and husbands. Selyse had rolled her eyes and made some snippy comment about the Tully obsession with water, but had of course complied in the end.They walked side-by-side down into the earth now, their hands finding each other in the gathering gloom.

When they came at last into the great cave Lysa paused, as she always did, to adjust to the power of the place; it never failed to make her feel small. As though guessing her thoughts, Selyse came up behind Lysa and rested her hand in the small of her back.

"I am with you."

"You always are."

Smiling, smiling, Lysa stepped away and let her heavy robe slide from her shoulders onto the floor. She did this very slowly, letting it catch for a moment at her waist before it dropped, conscious all the while that Selyse was watching. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing and let fall her hair; she had seen to it that it was sleek and scented with lavender, though of course the water would put an end to all that.

Still. It was the little things that kept love sweet.

Lysa hummed a little nonsense tune to herself as she walked into the steaming water of the main spring, cloaked only in her hair. She shuddered at the heat  as she waded up to her knees, her thighs, her head lolling back in pleasure; there was something to be said for a bath heated by the brooding heart of a volcano.

"Gods, that is nice. This might be the only place on this wretched isle that isn't chilled through."

"You complain, yet I notice that you keep coming back."

Lysa glanced over her shoulder at Selyse, as though just then recalling that she was there. Her beloved had kept her robe bound tight around her,  her hands curled in its folds, and she watched Lysa with the faintest of smiles. For a moment, Lysa wanted to say something about returning home, or perhaps offer a coy little quip about having to come back, as she kept forgetting her heart here, but the sight of Selyse standing serene on the shore, after they had been parted for so long, made her throat unbearably tight.

Shaking her head to clear it, Lysa waded out past her waist into the black water and plunged headlong into its depths, her skin stung by the great heat . She came up gasping and tangled in her own hair, every inch of her tingling, and laughed as she had not laughed in nearly a year.

It was the first time in a long while that she had felt like herself, whoever that was.

Lysa bobbed on the very tips of her toes for a moment, seeing how long she could hold the position until she canted over, and then leaned back into the water. It took her weight and held her like she belonged to it, bearing her up and letting her drift peacefully.

She tried out her backstroke, left unused these last few years, and was pleased to find that her body remembered the way of it; she glided over the pool and felt her hair tickle at her limbs like waterweed. It occurred to Lysa, then, that she had only ever felt truly strong when she was in the water.

Footsteps echoed in the vault of stone overhead and Lysa knew that Selyse was walking along the shore, keeping pace with her as she swam. Selyse never joined her in the water, preferring  instead to stay huddled in her robe and observe. She always seemed contented with that, and never anything more. Lysa paused and lifted her head to look, and saw that Selyse was at the very edge of the water, kneeling down on the ancient stone and staring at Lysa as though she were a stranger.

Lysa swam to where Selyse knelt and smiled up into her face, her mind a little muzzy with the heat of the spring. Her beloved leaned over her and reached down to cradle her face between cold hands; Lysa saw that the black of her eyes had grown huge, the gray irises nearly consumed, and her mouth was trembling.

"Are you well, darling?"

Selyse opened her mouth but no sound came forth. She paused, bit her lip in a way Lysa found distracting, and tried again.

"Out there. You...you are so..."

Selyse stopped herself and looked away, pressing her lips tight against whatever she had been about to say. Lysa tried not to be disappointed; she had long suspected that Selyse held poetry somewhere inside that practical head of hers, but knew she would likely never have it from her.

She had promised Lysa devotion, not songs.

Sighing Lysa tilted her head into Selyse's palm and lazily trailed her fingertips over her bony wrists.

"Won't you join me? You never have, no matter how I've begged."

It said much of the state of Selyse's heart, that she only nodded and bowed her head to kiss Lysa's brow. She stood and walked back to where the shallows began, and Lysa followed after at an easy stroke, to give her time if she needed it. By the time she neared the end of the pool Selyse had already folded her robe away and was standing ankle-deep in the water, dressed as though for sleep in a long shift. She had her arms crossed over her breasts, her face turned down, and Lysa's heart was touched to see her stoic darling so shy.

Love and dragon-water made her bold, and she walked out of the spring without shame. She took Selyse into her arms, fitted their bodies together as though they had been fashioned for nothing other than this, and kissed her.

"I am with you."

Selyse smiled, one corner of her mouth hitching high, and Lysa kissed her again until they both trembled.

"You are always with me."


	4. Chapter 4

Sansa had been in her aunt's care for over a fortnight, and had not once left the halls of the Eyrie. Though the great fortress was dreary and dim at this turning of the seasons, she could not quite bring herself to step out under the great pale sky.

The Eyrie was not her home, but she still feared what would become of her if she should leave it, even for a moment. She refused all of her aunt's invitations to walk in the garden, avoided her little cousin and Lady Shireen when they offered to show her the castle; Sansa kept to her rooms in the Maiden's Tower, lying fully clothed in her bed until summoned for meals.

She would have been content to keep to this pattern, but the Lady Baratheon would have none of it. She appeared outside Sansa's chambers one afternoon and sent her attendants scurrying with a look.

"You are coming with me to the gardens, child. That is not a request."

Sansa looked up into the older woman's sharp, severe face and merely nodded. Lady Baratheon seemed to relax, as though she had expected opposition, and reached out to lightly rest her hand on Sansa's shoulder.

"Come along."

Sansa walked beside Lady Baratheon in silence, hands folded neatly in front of her. She noticed that the Lady had a basket hooked in the crook of her arm, and she asked,  
"What are we to do in the garden?"

"Harvesting. Your aunt is kind enough to let me have run of the herb beds when I visit; I do what I can on Dragonstone, but its soil is unwelcoming of certain plants. A hard place, Dragonstone."

Sansa said nothing, and privately reflected on the fact that Dragonstone and its Lady were evidently well-matched. They continued on, Lady Baratheon leading Sansa through empty rooms and twisting corridors without once faltering. Sansa wondered just how often the Lady managed to visit her aunt.

It was cold outside, the sky a soft and cloudless blue, and Sansa knew instinctively that there would be frost that night.

“Is it not late for herb gathering?” she asked, before she could stop herself. Lady Baratheon glanced at her, brows raised over her pale eyes, and Sansa understood that the herbs were beside the point. She was being taken for a walk, like a lapdog, so that she would not sicken and die and inconvenience anyone.

The gardens were pretty, like the rest of the Eyrie. There were impressive fountains and a great deal of flowers Sansa never would have expected to thrive in such a high place, and many sculptures of  wistful women and men in thought. Lady Baratheon found a bed that looked neglected, taken over by grass and many tall plants with white blooms. She knelt down in the dirt, heedless of her gown, and indicated Sansa should follow; she handed her a spade from her basket

"Do you see this?" Lady Baratheon asked, and grasped a cluster of some of the tiny white flowers. "Yarrow. We'll be harvesting it today, bloom, stalk, and root. Homely though it is, it can be a breaker of fevers when used properly."

"It looks like a weed." Sansa said, to have something to say.

"Weed or not, any healer would take yarrow over roses."

That was all that was said for a while; Lady Baratheon did not seem to be someone who liked idle chat, and Sansa thought that she was only doing this at Aunt Lysa's bidding. Still. Even if she was being toted around and ignored, she would have this over the unrelenting stares of the Lannisters.

They worked in silence for a time, or at least Lady Baratheon did so; Sansa churned the earth with her borrowed spade and did her best to try and tell one root from the other. Her mind was elsewhere, in the Red Keep still, or far North on the battlements of Winterfell. The Eyrie was not home, and in some ways it felt as much like a cage as the Red Keep, but there was a clear sky overhead and cold air all around, and Sansa let herself relax.

The older woman worked steadily, digging deep and reaching into the earth to ease the yarrow plants out intact; she did not seem to mind the dirt under her nails or sap on her palms. Sansa couldn't recall even her mother doing anything like this, and then flinched away from the thought of her mother. She tired to think instead of what she had heard of the Lady of Dragonstone, if there was anything she ought to be wary of.

She did not think Lord Stannis and his wife held any hatred for her family; Aunt Lysa was their kin by marriage and Lady Baratheon would not have been her friend if they had hated house Stark.

 _You don't know that._ Sansa reminded herself. _Everyone hides everything._

Lady Baratheon seemed kindly enough, in her stern way, and it was members of her Queensguard that had stolen Sansa away. But kind hearts had their own aims to see through, did they not? Perhaps Lady had been making sure of a future playing piece when she agreed to help save Sansa.

  
"You have a brother that is being held captive." Sansa said, without preamble, and kept a careful eye on Lady Baratheon in case this should displease her. The lay only pursed her lips and slapped the earth from the roots of a yarrow plant, seemingly untroubled by grief or fear.

"Yes," she said, and laid the plant in her basket. That was all. Sansa stared at her.

"My aunt told me that she called in debts owed to her, to bring me away. She told me you did the same."

"Yes. Did you have a point, Lady Stark?"

"Oh. Well. I wondered, only, why you would not use your favors for your brother's sake? Why use them on me, when I am nothing to you?" Sansa asked in her smallest voice. She swallowed back her mounting panic and looked down at her grubby hands, wishing she had chosen a more delicate way. Beside her, Lady Baratheon turned and looked at Sansa with her strange eyes, looked and looked for so long that Sansa wanted to leap up and run.

She made herself stay.

"Your aunt feared for your life, and long ago I promised that I would keep sorrow from her door, if I could. Her happiness is mine."

"But your brother-"

"My brother is a man grown and an idiot- his blunders led him to captivity and thus it is earned. You are a child and do not deserve what was done to you."

Sansa sat quietly in the herb bed, struck to the bone and trembling. She swallowed once, and again, and knotted her skirts between her hands.

"But I did, I do."

"Nonsense."

"I'm a stupid little girl and it's all, all my fault, everything, everything is because I- because of me!"

She burst into tears at last, after holding on for longer than could be reckoned, letting the bone-jarring sobs wring the air out of her body. Lady Baratheon reared back in alarm, and if Sansa had been able she would have laughed to see her expression.

"That is nonsense." Lady Baratheon said again, very softly.

"B-but I told her! I told and she killed Daddy because of me!"

"You were a child, Sansa, and sheltered. No one understands all at eleven, and you were surrounded by vipers more poisonous than most. It was their doing that killed Ned Stark, not yours."

Sansa kept crying and crying, and laid herself down on the earth because she could not bear to keep herself upright anymore. She kept herself as small as she could and tried to stifle the sounds that were coming from her, because surely nothing living should sound like this.

"Sansa, Sansa, little one don't, don't do this now."

She felt hands on her, shaking gently, but her stomach hurt and her chest her throat her head hurt and she couldn't get a spare second to breathe and it was her fault, her fault, all her fault

"Sansa, that is _enough_."

Hands under her waist, closed around her arm, hauling and hauling until Sansa was sitting up and gasping for air. Lady Baratheon gripped her chin in one hand and dabbed at her face with a handkerchief, looking grim.

"You cannot go to pieces in your aunt's garden, child. It is not wrong to grieve, but you cannot afford it now. You must breathe, do you understand me?"

Sansa spluttered and nodded, reaching up to clumsily take the handkerchief. She breathed in great ragged gulps, coughing on cold mountain air that caught in her lungs like glass. She breathed and screwed her eyes shut against the tears, and let herself be pulled to her feet by Lady Baratheon.

"There. Listen to my voice, little one, and keep breathing. Better, yes, much better."

Sansa hid her face in the older woman's handkerchief and hiccuped, listening to her speak as she had been told. A long arm came around her shoulders and held her, rather stiffly, to the Lady's side. Sansa's feet moved of their own will as the Lady began walking.

"Come, let us find you a glass of water."

"Wait! The plants, we forgot-"

"A drink first. And perhaps a wash. You look frightful."

Sansa looked up and saw that Lady Baratheon was smiling at her, just a little, one corner of her mouth rising higher than the other. A joke, perhaps.

"Alright."

"Good girl. Keep up now."

Sansa let herself be led back into the castle and leaned into Lady Baratheon's side; she was tall and she was spare, and nothing at all like Catelyn Stark, but she was warm, and her voice was nice to listen to.

She sniffed and licked her lips, tasting salt. She shook out the borrowed handkerchief and tried to fold it into a neat damp square, as if in apology. She traced the initials stitched into the cloth (S and L twinned close as ivy in blue thread), and moment by moment she breathed.


	5. Chapter 5

Selyse had been born to be a great lady, a mother of many sons and a keeper of her husband’s domain, and all her life she had worked to become what she must. Yet she had failed twofold, for she had borne no sons and fled readily from Dragonstone, tempted away by one who was not her husband. This was not the first time, and if the gods were good it would not be the last; she could have but little, but that little she would keep.

"She is looking better. It does not flake as you said it did."

"Yes. I have found a good ointment for her at last, though it could do with perfecting."

Selyse sat against the headboard of Lysa's great bed and stretched her legs beneath the coverlet; beside her Lysa sat in the blazing morning light, Shireen sleeping in her arms. The Mother and Father both would frown upon Selyse for taking her husband's only child from his seat, yet she could not bring herself to care. Dragonstone was leagues away, and Lysa was here beside her, her head bowed over the sleeping girl. Her love held herself with perfect stillness, scarcely breathing, and as Selyse watched she carefully cupped her hand over Shireen’s brow to shield her eyes from the  light. Lysa’s hair fell flaming around her shoulders, and Selyse’s breath caught.

Motherhood had never been her vocation, but it was all Lysa had ever wanted. Selyse could not help but think that the Mother had turned trickster, to deal such a cruel joke.

She moved cautiously until her body touched Lysa's from shoulder to hip, loathe to disturb either her or Shireen. She watched the other woman, savored the warmth of her, the smell of her skin. 

"I was not fashioned for this, I think."

Lysa lifted her eyes from the baby, arched her slim brows in silent question. Shireen snuffled, turned over in her swaddling until her ruined face vanished in the folds of Lysa’s nightgown, and the sight made Selyse want to weep. She ducked her head, rested her brow on her beloved’s shoulder, shuddered as Lysa's hand combed through her hair. It took a long time to force the words beyond the tightness of her throat.

"You should have been her mother, not I. You were born for this, my Lissa."

To her credit, her fire-haired rivermaid  did not rush to reassure Selyse that she was wrong. Instead Lysa’s eyes went soft, and she drew Selyse down to rest her head in the hollow of her shoulder. Selyse allowed herself to be gathered in and absently took one of Shireen's tiny feet between thumb and forefinger. The pink toes flexed, as if in greeting, and she smiled.

"We shall manage, we three." Lysa said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: It's my own personal trashcanon that accents in the Reach differ from the Riverlands (because FUCK THE KINGSGUARD), so Selyse couldn't quite pronounce Lysa's name correctly when they were first friends. She called her 'Lissa' instead, which Lysa found cute, and it morphed into a petname of sorts.
> 
> COME FIGHT ME.
> 
> Also pay no attention to the fact that Stannis probably wouldn't let Selyse travel far with their sickly infant SHHHHHH.
> 
> Subject to even more editing because ugh.


	10. Chapter 10

She did not know where she found the strength to open the Moon Door on her own, but she took the wheel in her own hands and in time she turned it until the great bronze hatch opened and the wind came screaming up.

Lysa stood for a long while and just looked at the door, thinking of how it looked like a mouth, black and gaping, and then thinking of nothing, and then thinking of how cold the air was. She drank the last of her wine and drew near the edge of the door, shivering under Jon’s old traveling cloak; she stood back a little way at first, then drew closer and closer until her toes hung over the edge and the wind whipped her hair around her face.

Lysa looked down. 

She had been afraid of heights as a girl, rarely ever climbing over a man’s height in any of the trees of the godswood at Riverrun, but that fear was long dead. One could not live as long as she had in the Eyrie and keep that sort of fear.

Carefully, Lysa sat down at the very edge and dangled her legs over nothing, smiling to herself with the air made her nightgown billow up.

You could not even see the ground at night- all was darkness and noise beyond the Moon Door, and to Lysa it felt like watching a particularly monstrous pet at sleep, a strange mingling of fondness and fear.

Six hundred feet, and then the hard and heartless flank of the mountain.That sensation of space beneath you -the realization of _nothingness_ \- was stronger than wine, and stayed in the blood far longer.

Lysa pulled the cloak tighter around herself (it still smelled of him, even now, and she found she didn’t mind), tucked her chin down and moved her feet in lazy circles in the frigid night air. She retreated inside herself, which she was doing more and more often it seemed, and let her mind drift.

She had left some part of herself on alert, and so was not badly startled when the door opened and she heard hurried footfalls behind her. The intruder paused, nearly stumbled, and there was the sharp hiss of indrawn breath.

“ _Lissa_.”

“Hello, your Majesty.”

She could hear Selyse in the dark; her breath was coming very quickly, and her steps were uncertain.

 _So she is still mortal after all_ , Lysa thought, and kicked at the void beneath her as a child kicks at water.

“Lissa, what are you doing?”

“I found my chamber to be oppressive. I came here to be invigorated. It is, you know. Invigorating.”

“Come _away_ from there!”

Lysa looked up from the circle of night at last and turned her head. Selyse was closer now, her face very pale, her shoulders hunched forward, her hands out and clutching at nothing. Lysa returned her attention to the Moon Door, as though the sight of her was not terribly interesting.

“No.”

It was perhaps not the most eloquent reply Lysa had ever given, but she would not let that bother her. She reached beside her for her wineglass, remembered that she had already finished off the bottles she had brought with her, and irately tossed the glass out the Moon Door.

Selyse’s breath hitched, and Lysa relished the sound in a small and nasty way.

“Her Majesty is not nervous, is she?”

She twisted around suddenly and saw such a look of utter terror in the other woman’s face that she made herself be still. They watched one another, Selyse with her hands clenched tightly at her sides, Lysa with her back to oblivion.

“Come away, Lysa.”

“Am I not permitted my pleasures? I recently declared war on the most powerful house in the Seven Kingdoms and will soon be sending my folk to slaughter. For you.” Lysa said, but she drew her feet back up and tucked them under her body. A concession.

Selyse licked her lips and chanced a step forward, then another. Her hands moved restlessly from shadow to moonlight and back again, like moths. She wanted to do something, Lysa thought, but did not quite trust herself. Lysa sighed.

“Sit with me.” she said, and Selyse came to her without hesitation. She glanced but once down the howling throat of the Moon Door and settled herself just behind Lysa, her hands resting hesitantly on her shoulders.

“Will you hold me, Lissa? We have quarreled, I know-”

“ _Quarreled_ , she calls it.” Lysa muttered.

“I need you still.”

The words were like honey, or wine, or the newly risen sun; they were a sure currency with Lysa, and well they both knew it. 

_I am unchanged,_ Lysa thought. _That is all I have ever wanted._

Suddenly tired, suddenly heartsore _,_ she turned and took Selyse into her arms _,_ and her queen came gladly. _  
_

“Oh,” she whispered. “You are trembling. Why?”

Selyse hid her face in the curve of Lysa’s neck and knotted her fingers in her wild hair, her voice nearly too quiet to hear.

“I’ve had a nightmare. You fell, and I could no nothing.”

“Oh.” Lysa said again, and held Selyse until she could feel the beat of her heart in her own chest. It did not occur to her to wonder if the dream was a ruse.

They sat as though they were two trees that had grown around each other, hair and hands and muttered apologies tangled together in the cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exposition time!: Stannis has declared for the Iron Throne and Selyse immediately assumes that Lysa will side with them, as she and Lysa are together. Lysa, however, is extremely leery of going up against the Lannisters and she and Selyse fall out (possibly leading to Selyse trying to FORCE her to throw in which doesn't end well). 
> 
> Selyse eventually comes to her in the Eyrie and Lysa agrees to side with the Baratheons, in exchange for her help in rescuing Sansa from King's Landing. Lysa is still Not Happy about going to war.


End file.
